Colloquial Finnish (suomen puhekieli) is the standard colloquial dialect of the Finnish language. It is spoken in the Greater Helsinki region, and in urbanized areas in the Tavastian and Central Finland dialectal areas, such as the cities of Tampere, Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna. In addition, this applies also to the coastal cities, such as Vaasa and Porvoo,[1] which have been traditionally Swedish-speaking, and have experienced an influx of Finnish speakers from a variety of dialectal areas.

The standard language takes most of its features from these dialects, i.e. most "dialectal" features are reductions with respect to this form of language. The combination of the common spoken Finnish and a dialect gives a regional variant (aluepuhekieli), which has some local idiosyncrasies but is essentially similar to the common spoken Finnish.

As in any language, the spoken version(s) of Finnish often vary from the written form. Some of its constructs are either too arbitrary (e.g. "soft d", cf. Finnish phonology), or too dialectal, e.g. hän (see below), for use in the spoken language. Furthermore, some very common and "accentless" sound changes are not reflected in the standard language, particularly fusion, liaison and some diphthong reductions.

There is also the problem that purists want to avoid irregularity regardless of actual usage. This has left some sound changes common in spoken language out from the standard language. There is a tendency to favor "more logical" constructs over easily pronounceable ones. This ideal does reflect spoken Finnish usage to a degree, as Finnish is demonstrably a conservative language with few reduction processes, but it is not entirely accurate. The problem of avoiding "irregularity" is most pronounced in spelling, where internal sandhi is not transcribed, because there is the idea that morphemes should be immutable. For example, the "correct" spelling is syönpä ("I eat" with emphasis), even though the pronunciation is usually syömpä. The explanation is that -n- and -pä are in different morphemes just like the explanation that English boys is not spelled with a z is that they are in different morphemes.

There are also a number of grammatical forms which are used in written Finnish, but only very rarely in spoken. For example, there are a number of constructions using participles which are usually rendered analytically in speech. Some cases and moods are rarely constructive in spoken Finnish, e.g. the instructive and comitative cases and the potential mood. Some survive only in expressions.

On the other hand, spoken language has its own features rarely or never found in formal language. Most importantly, there is very common external sandhi, and some assimilatory sound changes. (On the contrary, there is no vowel reduction.) In some variants (e.g. Vaasa, Kymenlaakso) of spoken Finnish -n kanssa is abbreviated into a clitic that is effectively a comitative case, e.g. -nkans or -nkaa.

The most common reflexes for old Finnish dental fricatives are /d/ for /ð/, and /ts/ or /t(ː)/ for /θ(ː)/. For example, metsä, metsän or mettä, metän ← meθθä, meθän "forest, of the forest" and meidän < meiðän "ours". Loss of /d/ also occurs, e.g. meiän. These are seen as "accent-free" pronunciations. Dialects generally have different reflexes — in fact, the different reflexes are used as a distinguishing feature between different dialects. For more details, see Finnish phonology.

One important sound change, which has gone to completion in Estonian but occurs complicated in Finnish, is mutation of word-final /n/ into a glottal stop/ʔ/, orthographically represented by an apostrophe. In some dialects, such as Savo, word-final /n/ is systematically replaced by /ʔ/, e.g. isä'iän ← isän ääni "father's voice". Both pronunciations can be heard in the Helsinki area. This means that the genitive/accusative form -n, which is very common in any form of Finnish, is simply noted by a glottal stop. However, this glottal stop undergoes sandhi whenever followed by consonant, or more often than not (see below).

In standard written Finnish, there are certain words ending with the letter i, which, when seen through the prism of the spoken language, can be seen to actually end in a consonant with the i appearing only by liaison when case endings are added, but carry the last i in the formal dictionary form.

anteeksi (sorry in formal Finnish)

anteeks (sorry in colloquial Finnish)

yksi (one in formal Finnish)

yks (one in colloquial Finnish)

This does not apply to certain other words ending in i such as tuli (fire), takki (jacket), nupi (tack), and taksi (taxi), where the final i is always pronounced in colloquial spoken Finnish and the i is thus critical to the meaning.

Also, in standard language, an "I-E mutation" is seen, where /i/ is used in the nominative and /e/ in some oblique forms (see Finnish phonology). This /i/ is "removed" or "added" according to the particular construction, and in spoken Finnish, a variety is seen. Particularly in Helsinki, the deletion of some, but not all word-final vowels even beyond /i/ occurs sometimes especially if no ambiguity results from its disappearance. This is a feature of Western Finnish dialects, found also in Savonian dialects and Estonian.

Word-final vowel clusters ending in /ɑ/ or /æ/ have much variation in dialects of Finnish. Especially in Helsinki they assimilate, where only the resulting chroneme marks the partitive in many words.

puhun suomea — puhun suomee "I speak Finnish"

pitkiä — pitkii "(some) long (things)"

An /eʕ/ or /eæ̯/ cluster also appears in many adjectives:

pimeä — pimee "dark"

In other areas of Finland, these clusters may have a different fate. Another common dialectal variant is the raising of /e/ to /i/ in the adjectives: pimiä. (Partitives are unaffected by this.) Some rarer versions of this suffix include -jä / -ja, -ie, and even -ii.

Similar to the diphthongization of older */eː oː øː/ to /ie̯ uo̯ yø̯/ (unchanged in Estonian), many eastern dialects of Finnish diphthongize also the long vowels /ɑː æː/ to /oʕ eæ̯/. In Savonian dialects, these have shifted further on to /uʕ iæ̯/.

/ie̯ uo̯ yø̯/ can become /iː uː yː/ when in contact with another vowel. In many cases this results from colloquial deletion of /d/. For example:

A related phenomenon is the final consonant sandhi. It improves the rhythm of speech and allows the speech to not to "get stuck" to word boundaries, and because of this, may be heard even in formal language. When a word ends in a stressed mora, which ends in a vowel or an omittable consonant, the consonant beginning the next word is doubled and it connects the words. The two words end up being pronounced with auxiliary stress is on the syllables beginning the words. This is virtually never written down, except in dialectal transcriptions. For example, "Now it arrives! You go first":

If the consonant cannot be omitted without ambiguity, this does not happen. For example:

Menetkö sinä ensin?

Meeksä/meetsä ensin? = "Will you go first?"

The meaning would change, if the consonant was omitted:

Mene sinä ensin.

Meessä ensin. = "You go first."

Generally, you should notice that spoken Finnish is not neatly divided up into words as the spelling would suggest, due to other phonotactical sandhi effects. For example, regardless of word boundaries, np is always /mp/, nk is always /ŋk/ (where /ŋ/ is a velar nasal).

Some dialects have the full-length personal pronouns minä and sinä, but most people use shorter equivalents, like these found in Greater Helsinki region:

minä → mä

sinä → sä

The root words are also shorter:

minu- → mu-, e.g. minun → mun "my"

sinu- → su-, e.g. sinun → sun "yours"

The third-person pronouns hän ('he' or 'she') and he ('they'), are commonly used in spoken language only in Southwestern Finland, and increasingly rarely also there. Elsewhere they are usually replaced by their non-personal equivalents – note that there is no pejorative sense in talking about people as 'it', unlike in English. Do note when speaking of animals, they are always called 'it', even in written Finnish.

hän → se

he → ne

For example, the sentence "Did he mistake me for you?" has these forms:

Numbers 11-19 are formed by appending -toista, which can be shortened to -toist. Numbers 20-90 are formed by appending -kymmentä, which can be shortened to -kymment or even -kyt(ä). Kolme, neljä and seittemän can be abbreviated to kol-, nel- and seit- with -kytä, but not independently, as in kolkytäkolme "33" or seitkytäneljä "74".

If one is forced to count fast then even shorter forms are used:

yy

kaa

koo

nee

vii

kuu

sei / see

kasi

ysi

kymppi

-toista becomes -toi, -too or even -to. -kymmentä becomes -kyt, with 20-60 typically retaining their longer numeral forms (e.g. kakskyt rather than **kaakyt for 20). 70 is typically seitkyt or seiskyt, while 80 and 90 do with kasi- and ysi-.

The numerals 1–9 have their own names, different from the cardinal numbers used in counting. Numbers that have longer names are often shortened in speech. This may be problematic for a foreigner to understand, if she/he has learned words by book:

Personal pronouns are used extensively in spoken Finnish whereas in formal forms the pronoun is often optional (indicated in brackets in this article). Furthermore the pronouns themselves in spoken Finnish are different from those used in formal Finnish.

Personal pronouns mä and sä are used extensively in colloquial Finnish in place of minä and sinä (I and singular you). The pronouns se and ne, which in the formal language are used only as impersonal pronouns meaning (impersonal it and they) are used in the spoken language as personal pronouns (which in the formal language would be hän and he (personal pronouns he/she and they).

One striking difference between colloquial Finnish and formal Finnish is use of the passive form in the first person plural. Thus for example

Olemme Helsingissä (formal language)

Me ollaan Helsingissä (colloquial Finnish)

We're in Helsinki

Another is that the third person plural suffix -vat or -vät is not used in the spoken language; instead, the third person singular form is used with plural meaning being conveyed by the pronoun ne (they)

Therefore, the full present-tense paradigm of puhua "to speak" in everyday speech is:

mä puhun (spoken) — (minä) puhun (standard)

sä puhut — (sinä) puhut

se puhuu — hän puhuu

me puhutaan — (me) puhumme

te puhutte — (te) puhutte

ne puhuu — he puhuvat

Some e-stem verbs have abbreviated (irregular) oblique forms, where /n/ or /l/ is elided. This class includes only four frequently used verbs. In Finnish, verbs have an infinitive form, marked with -ta and used in the infinitive, and an oblique form, which is used in personal forms. Consonant gradation and assimilation of the 't' in -ta may be applied. In the standard language, the correspondence between the two is always regular. In spoken language, some verbs have assimilated oblique forms, while retaining the regular infinitive:

engl.

I inf.

oblique stem

irreg. stem

be

olla

ole-

oo-

come

tulla

tule-

tuu-

go

mennä

mene-

mee-

put

panna

pane-

paa-

For example, these forms, as such, are represented by the imperatives:

The 't' at the end of participles ending -nut, -rut, -lut, -sut (or -nyt etc.) is often dropped when no consonant follows, or replaced by gemination of the following consonant.

minä en puhunut (formal)

mä en puhunu (colloquial)

I didn't speak

but

mä en puhunu kenellekään (colloquial)

I didn't speak to anyone

is actually pronounced as if it were

mä en puhunuk kenellekkään (with examples of gemination)

In the formal language some pronouns are considered optional, but in spoken language the pronoun is usually enunciated but may be optional when answering questions (which puts the person in the proper context).

Menemme Ouluun or me menemme Ouluun We are going to Oulu (formal language)

Me mennään Ouluun We are off to Oulu (informal language)

In the latter example, dropping "me" would change the meaning from a statement to a suggestion

Compare the conjugation of OLLA in the formal language (Table 1) and in the spoken or colloquial language (Table 2). Table 2 shows in highlights the areas where there are differences in the structures between formal and informal. Optional pronouns are in brackets. English equivalent is in Table 3.

The choice of morphemes -kos/kös or -ks is not always purely dialectal or accidental. Many Finns regularly use more than one variation in their speech. The choice might depend among others on the rhythm of the sentence or the (wished) tempo of the discussion. Sometimes it has other clearly communicational purposes e.g. the longer variation might be used to soften an intruding question.

The clitic -s is also found in imperatives, e.g. me(n)es "(I expect you to) go!" It can also be, that the -tkö elides not to -ks, but -t before a 's', e.g. menetkö sä ? me(n)et sä. Because this is identical to sä menet except for the word order, questions are indicated by word order.

Spoken language has a different grammar for the possessive suffix. For direct addresses, save for one form it is not used, so that the pronoun cannot be omitted. Even in the second-person singular, the pronoun is virtually never omitted. In contrast, in the literary language, the pronoun is optional and typically omitted.

Formal

Spoken

English

(minun) taloni

mun talo

my house

(sinun) talosi

sun talo(s)/talos

your (sg) house

(hänen) talonsa

sen talo

his/her house

(meidän) talomme

meiän talo

our house

(teidän) talonne

teiän talo

your (pl) house

(heidän) talonsa

niitten/niien talo

their house

Here, the pronoun of the literary form is also shown.

Notice one fact: Finnish has no possessive adjectives. The pronouns are regularly inflected, like if "I's house", "you's house", "we's house".

However, the suffixes -s, -nsa and -nne are used to avoid repeating a pronoun, e.g. "He took his hat and left" is Se otti lakkinsa ja lähti. (The translation from English *Se otti sen lakin ja lähti would mean "He took his/her hat and left" or "He took the (specific) hat and left".)

When a negative sentence is formed, the main verb goes into the imperative mood and gives all of its inflections to the negative verb ei, e.g. tuemme → emme tue. Usually the word mitään ("anything") and an expletive is added to the sentence. This means that even if the negative verb ei is left out, the meaning is indicated by this context. For example:

Ei se mitään osaa. "He doesn't know anything."

Se mitään osaa. "He know anything." ("doesn't" omitted)

This omission of the negative verb ei is considered one of the most recent changes in Finnish. Usually this construction indicates mistrust or frustration. (There is a less than serious text[which?] calling this aggressiivi.) However, it can be a neutral negative statement: Tästä artikkelista mitään opi (From this article, you don'tlearn anything).

Linguists such as Mielikäinen argue that the dialects of Finnish have been considerably homogenized by 20th century developments of urbanization and other internal population movements to the point that "pure" dialects have disappeared. "Local spoken languages" have developed from standard Finnish to give variety with essentially standard Finnish structure but with some local features. Considerable stigma has been associated with dialects (accurately or not) perceived as rural in the 20th century. People who have moved to the city have adopted a variety resembling standard Finnish, which has been imposed upon dialect speakers by the school, the military and the employers.

Breaking up some consonant clusters on syllable boundaries with an epenthetic vowel. This is a feature of several dialects, such as those of Ostrobothnia and Savonia: The neutral vowel is the same as the preceding vowel. For example, juhla → juhula "celebration", salmi → salami "strait", palvelu → palavelu "service", halpa → halapa "cheap", äffä → ähävä (via ähvä) "letter F". Pairs of dissimilar consonants with /l/ or /h/ (in Savo, also /n/) as the first consonant are subject to epenthesis; other clusters or geminates are not. However, a strong epenthetic vowel is seen as dialectal, and in Helsinki and urbanized areas, indicates origins "in the countryside" (since for Helsinki people, everything but Helsinki is rural).

Tavastian dialects are diverse because other, surrounding dialects have influenced them. The following features are all found in Finnish spoken in Helsinki, and many of them occur also in some other Tavastian dialects.

Word sillai "in that way", which is usually something else like silleen elsewhere.

The first infinitive, e.g. juosta "to run", is replaced by the third-person form juoksee "runs" by some speakers. For example, standard Voisitko sinä juosta hakemaan sen becomes Voisitsä juoksee hakeen sen "Could you run to get it". This form is probably historically speaking not the third-person form, but the colloquial, shortened form juokseen of the third infinitive form juoksemaan, which exhibites a tendency to oust the first infinitive even in the formal language, cf. the old dispute, whether alkaa juoksemaan ("to start running") should be allowed in the formal language or not (the current norm is still alkaa juosta with the first infinitive). (also in Tuusula and Nurmijärvi)

Abbreviations are common in Finnish spoken in the Southern coast of Finland. Final syllables in frequently used words may erode, like sitten → sit, mutta → mut. Case endings might be abbreviated, usually by the loss of the final vowel, e.g. siltä → silt. (If a geminate would be "left dangling" at the end of the word, it becomes a single consonant, e.g. talossa → *taloss → talos.)

Helsinki also has a local slang, containing foreign loanwords which may be unintelligible to people from other parts of Finland. Some slang words have spread to the spoken language of youngsters elsewhere in Finland.

Tampere is also in the area of Tavastian dialects.

Occasional flapping or deletion of intervocalic "L"; the resulting sound is orthographically nil: kyllä siellä olisi → kyä siä ois. This is seen even in the accentless form oisko ← standard olisiko.

A unique characteristic of Turku dialect is the "S" imperfect tense, which has the ending -si instead of -i, e.g., sattusi for sattui.

Savonia: some difference in pronouns, myö, työ for me, te. Notice that the Savo dialect has complicated differences in grammar, vowels and consonants compared to the standard language, e.g. öylen for eilen, mänj for meni, omaa rataansa → ommoo rattoosa. The Savo dialect is the largest single dialect, and as such, has variants that differ significantly.

Ostrobothnia: Consonant clusters with -j- are not allowed, so that a -i- is pronounced instead, e.g. kirja → kiria. Minor vowel changes, for example, taloa → talua. Particularly, the half-long vowels (found in word-final codaless single-vowel syllables) are lengthened into full-blown long vowels, as in iso → isoo. The sound /d/ is completely replaced with a rhotic consonant r, either a trill /r/, or a flap/ɾ/, which produces problems such as that there is no or almost no contrast between veden (of water) and veren (of blood). For speakers with the flap, there remains a small difference, not generally audible for outsiders. Usually context can be relied on to distinguish the word.

Vaasa, Ostrobothnia, to an extent generic Finnish, too: Many frequently used expressions become clitics - this is optional, though. E.g. pronouns become clitics for the negative verb ei and for the verb "to be". In this table, the apostrophe (') is something between a full J and no sound at all.